"Won't you call it off for just five minutes, Miss Langdon?" he asked in a low tone which had begun to vibrate with emotion. "Just call it off for one minute, if you won't let it go for five. It sure is hard to sit here, alongside of you, and not only to keep my hands and eyes away from you, but to keep my tongue cinched with a diamond hitch. I suppose I am hasty, and a mighty sight too previous for your customs here in the East, but I can't see why you won't take up with a chap like me; and, besides--"
"Mr. Morton!" She turned to him unsmilingly, her eyes cold and serious, and she spoke in a tone so low that even the sound of it could not extend to the young ladies who occupied the rear seats in the tonneau. "It is my duty to tell you that I have just become a willing party--a willing party, please understand--to a business transaction, by the terms of which I am now the affianced wife of--" Patricia paused abruptly. Morton, still guiding the machine delicately in and out through the traffic of the street, turned a shade paler under his sun-burned skin, and Patricia could see that his hand gripped almost fiercely upon the steering-wheel. She realized that he had understood the important part of what she had said, and she did not complete the unfinished sentence. There was a considerable silence before either of them spoke again, and then Morton asked calmly, but in a voice that was so changed as to be scarcely recognizable: "Of whom, Patricia?" He made use of her given name unconsciously, and if she noticed the slip, she did not heed it.
"I need not mention the gentleman's name," she told him. "It is unnecessary."
"What do you mean by referring to it as a business transaction?" he demanded, turning his face toward hers for an instant, and showing an angry glitter in his eyes. "If it is something that was forced upon you--"
"I meant--it doesn't matter what I meant, Mr. Morton."
For just one instant, he flashed his eyes upon her again, and she saw the lines of determination harden upon his face.
"It sounded mighty strange to me," he said, quietly, but with studied persistence. "I don't mind confessing that I can't quite savvy its meaning. I didn't know that 'business transaction,' was a stock expression here, in the East, in connection with an engagement party. But I suppose I'm plumb ignorant. I feel so, anyhow."